Yu. O. Martov.
FROM UNPUBLISHED MEMOIRS.

Pskov *)

I did not quickly grasp the situation that Ulyanov and Potresov familiarized me with.

It turned out to be rather tangled and demanded swift, yet at the same time cautious decisions.

We were returning to Russia under the impression of the dominance of the "economical tendency" in the ranks of social democracy, which had led to a split in the party's leading organization abroad—the "Union of Russian Social Democrats Abroad," recognized at the 1st Party Congress as its Official representative, dissolved the following year. The group "Emancipation of Labor" with a handful of supporters (B. A. Koltsov, O. S. Blumenfeld, G. Goldenberg-Meshkovsky, G. Leiteysen-Lindov, L. I. Orthodox-Axelrod and others) formed the organization "Social-Democrat," while the majority of the "Union" came under the leadership of the advocates of economism and revisionism B. N. Krichevsky, V. I. Ivanshin, P. Teplov, V. Makhnovets. This split had little effect on the organizations in Russia,

*) Published with the permission of comrade I. I. Ionov, who acquired the unfinished manuscript of Vol. II of "Notes of a Social-Democrat" by Yu. O. Martov from his heirs. The publication represents only part of Martov's manuscript. The title belongs to the editorial board.

In the printed excerpt of Yu. O. Martov's memoirs we receive for the first time a description of the "Pskov meeting" given by one of its participants. Until now, there have been no data in the literature concerning what actually happened in Pskov. Given that of the direct participants of the meeting (V. I. Lenin, Yu. O. Martov, A. N. Potresov, S. I. Radchenko, P. B. Struve and M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky) there remain alive only the present fierce enemy of socialism P. B. Struve and A. N. Potresov, Martov's description acquires particular historical interest. Probably L. N. Radchenko could provide some additional information. Editorial Board.

Lenin Collection, IV
4

because at that time the majority of them either subjectively leaned toward "economism," professed by the Petersburg "Union of Struggle's" organ, *Rabochaya Mysl'* (Workers' Thought), which rejected, as the immediate task of the working class, the struggle for the overthrow of tsarism, or came to terms with it because, given the weakness of the party, they did not think it would be practically possible for the party to raise this question of struggle. The mood of this party "swamp" corresponded entirely to the tendency of the foreign Union, which in literature calculated for the broad masses devoted primary attention to questions of professional-economic struggle, but meanwhile exposed the role of the government in the struggle between labor and capital, and in the programmatic and tactical articles of its organ *Rabochee Delo* (Workers' Cause) recognized in principle the task of social democracy as struggle against autocracy, postponing only the beginning of it until the moment of greater consolidation of the mass movement. However, the split that occurred abroad alarmed even some elements of the social democracy active in Russia. Although the group "Emancipation of Labor," unlike the recently emigrated leaders of the "Union," possessed weak personal connections with members of the organizations operating in Russia, nonetheless its polemical works, provoked by the split, reached Russia and awakened among some old Marxists alarm concerning the deviation of party development in the direction of eliminating revolutionary content from the program and practice. Particularly in this regard, as I later became convinced, a small brochure by P. B. Axelrod entitled "Open Letter to the Editorial Board of Workers' Cause" acted effectively, in which the author, not limiting himself, like Plekhanov in his *Vademecum*, to exposing individual "unionists" for theoretical sympathies with revisionism and neglect of broad political questions, clearly showed how the prevailing practice in Russia of self-limitation of social democracy to the everyday questions of factory struggle, instead of creating, as the "economists" believed, a pure-blooded class basis for the party, in fact inevitably prepared such a situation in which the working masses, once they became conscious of their general civic political interests, would be inclined to conduct their struggle for them outside the ranks of their class organization, under the banner of some bourgeois-democratic party. As in his earlier tactical brochures, P. B. Axelrod, therefore, persistently advanced before social democracy the task of

YU. O. MARTOV. FROM UNPUBLISHED MEMOIRS

not only to involve the working class in direct political struggle against the existing state order, but also to make it, as an independent social force, the vanguard of all democracy, drawing onto the path of struggle against tsarism all other social forces.

With this program we were returning to Russia. It was formulated in the aforementioned "protest" against the anti-revolutionary Credo, worked out by Lenin, to which exiled Marxists in various places adhered in 1899. But in that same protest was also formulated the organizational path which was to lead to the fulfillment by the party of new tasks. This was the path of restoration of the party itself as an organized whole. The fact is that after the failures of 1898 the party center disappeared, and we explained its non-renewal not so much by conspiratorial-technical difficulties as by the triumph of "economism's" sentiments, which applied to the process of organizational unification the same method of "organic evolution" as to the process of transition of the working masses' own struggle from more elementary slogans to more complex ones (the so-called "theory of stages"). From the point of view of the economists, to the given level of movement there corresponded a weak federative connection between local organizations, and they were already inclined to regard attempts to hurry with the creation of a central apparatus for directing the movement as "Populism" and "Jacobinism," leading to a break from the masses.

To restore the Central Committee of the party and its central organ, *Rabochaya Gazeta* (Workers' Gazette)—thus we formulated our demands to the party in 1899.

When Lenin and Potresov visited Moscow and Petersburg, they learned that this organizational program had been taken up by precisely those whom we considered our main opponents—the "worker-activists" from the foreign "Union."

It turned out that two representatives of this union—P. Teplov and Ts. Kopelzon ("Timofey," "Grishin"), my old comrade from Vilna, had undertaken a trip across Russia at that time to persuade the local committees to organize the Second Party Congress. It became clear that the "emissaries" of the union, familiar with our plans, took them into account and were projecting at the forthcoming congress to propose the restoration, as the official organ of the party, of *Rabochaya Gazeta* with the provision of our triumvirate with its editorship. This was first spoken of in a conversation with Ulyanov in Moscow by Kh. Lalayants, leader of the Ekaterinoslav committee and editor of *Yuzhny Rabochiy* (Southern Worker), who came to probe the attitude of the northerners toward the foreign project of a congress. Then, even before my arrival in Pskov, Timofey himself came there and in conversation with Lenin and Potresov broached the same theme.

At first glance the "Union's" plan should have seemed to us the most Machiavellian chess move. In order to overthrow Plekhanov and Axelrod, they were exploiting the prejudices of Russian practitioner-"economists" against the overly "political" bent of their activity. But once in "power," they would soon have to feel that pure "economism" goes and will go into decline. The high industrial prosperity of the mid-1890s was giving way to crisis, and the directly won successes of the local strike movement relatively easily obtained in 1895-97 were already becoming anachronistic by 1899. Strikes increasingly became very turbulent, and the ground for the introduction of political agitation became more favorable. In the industrial South, where the strike wave reached with delay from the North, the turbulent character of the movement, conditioned by unfavorable economic conjuncture, immediately led it into such open clashes with the government (shootings of crowds and judicial trials in Mariupol and other places) that the transition to "politics" in the form of all sorts of "parts" was accomplished in the working masses comparatively easily. And at the same time there began a public awakening absent at the moment of formation of our strike movement. For the workers' movement there was being created a completely different social background than that which shortsighted empiricists had in mind when developing their "theory of stages"—the gradual, "organic" transition of the proletarian movement from fragmented tasks to general ones. In 1899 the student body, having taken the tool of the strike from the workers, developed "disorders" unprecedented in scale and enthusiasm, and the public resonance which the students' action met on this occasion allowed one to hope that the political isolation of the workers on the arena of active struggle would soon end.

All this did not escape the consciousness of the "worker-activists." Mostly practitioners—only B. N. Krichevsky was a typical man of letters, though devoid of all theoretical stability, though with great theoretical interests—they, probably imperceptibly to themselves and without any violence to themselves, grasped the correct line. In touring the committees their representatives assured everyone that the entire split with the group "Emancipation of Labor" was essentially devoid of any principled basis and that the overturning they had produced was caused only by the dictatorial tendencies of Plekhanov and Axelrod and their intolerance toward those who disagreed and was aimed solely at ensuring more active work of the "Union" in serving the work in Russia with brochures for mass agitation; that all attempts by the "old men" to construct a deep programmatic and tactical divergence between themselves and them are based on nothing: neither revisionism, nor obscuring of political tasks, nor organizational fragmentation of the party does the "Union" as a whole sympathize with. And as striking proof, the union's proposal to us—avowed "orthodox" and "Plekhanovites"—to come and "wield" the central organ of the party was cited.

As I have already said, at first glance the proposal seemed Machiavellian: we were apparently being tempted to separate ourselves from the group "Emancipation of Labor," whose solidarity we had solemnly proclaimed, and, drawing us into the "legal" framework of party-statutory relations, make it difficult for us to unite with this group. But neither Lenin nor Potresov were inclined, informing me of conversations with Kopelzon, to explain the actions of the "Union" exclusively as military cunning. On the contrary, they saw in them recognition of the strength of the position we had acquired in the party, and willingness to meet us halfway. And since the "Union" activists understood that the party is unthinkable without the group "Emancipation of Labor," it was evident that they did not wish to set us at odds with it, but rather to lay, through our hands, a bridge to reconciliation with it.

The "Union's" proposals had to be reckoned with all the more seriously in that it had secured the support of two of the strongest organizations in Russia. On the one hand, it was backed by the Bund, whose foreign representatives were allied with the "Union." On the other, they connected with the group of *Yuzhny Rabochiy* (Southern Worker), which, thanks to the militant revolutionary tone and the talent of the newspaper and thanks to the devilish organizational energy of its main working force—Abram Ginzburg ("Andrey," subsequently the well-known Kiev writer-Marxist Naumov), became in fact the regional center of the southeast. In my Turukhansk plans I had, partly on the basis of letters from my brother Sergey, "aimed" precisely at this region as our main organizational support, believing that here the new understanding of the tasks of social democracy would be easier for us to instill than in the centers of the movement—in Petersburg, Moscow, and Kiev. Therefore I chose Poltava for my residence.

The "Union's" proposal, supported by the Bund and the southerners, was quite tempting. It immediately gave us a legal party position for influencing the consciousness of the active workers and, moreover, spared us from any organized upheavals. We could expect serious opposition only from the group of pure "economists" of the Petersburg type, who in their *Rabochaya Mysl'* (Workers' Thought) were clearly working toward the absurd idea of trade unionism under conditions of Russian tsarism, but who, thanks to the theoretical confusion of their adherents, were completely unable to formulate and substantiate their program. The rest of the mass of practitioners would have followed us.

The reverse side of the coin was the vagueness of the political sentiments of these practitioners, and indeed of the leaders of the foreign "Union" themselves. The patterns of the mid-decade still so dominated the minds of the practitioners; so habituated were they, even in constructing broader political tasks, to dance "from the hearth"—from the strike, in which the "bourgeoisie" directly opposed the "proletariat"—that we, with our plan to raise the banner of *nation-wide* struggle against tsarism, had to ask ourselves: would not our official position and the control of the future central committee tie our hands and feet? Would not hastily restored unification take on the character of a rotten compromise?

Having discussed the question from all sides, we decided to accept the invitation to the congress, expected no later than two months hence, and immediately to write to the group "Emancipation of Labor," proposing that it *send us its mandate* to this congress. To the congress we were to present a detailed "confession of faith" in which the revolutionary tasks of the party would be clearly expressed, as we understood them, and we were to accept our collective candidacy for editors of the party organ only on the basis of the congress's affirmation of this program. If, in view of the brevity of the time remaining before the congress and the impossibility of preparing the guiding circles of the local workers through personal tours to accept our platform, the congress proved unprepared to work out a coherent program of action, we would insist that the congress make no principled binding decisions, not restore an official organ of the party, but permit us, at our own risk, to open in our organ a discussion of the party's current tasks. We reckoned in this also with the possibility that the congress would declare itself merely a consultative conference.

This second outcome seemed to us all, given the present situation, the most desirable. All signs pointed to the fact that although the ideology of "economism" was exhausting itself both in working and in intelligentsia circles, there reigned great confusion in the heads of the practitioners trained on *Rabochaya Mysl'* and the writings of the legal "critics of Marx" concerning programmatic and tactical questions.

The second question that troubled us was our relationship to precisely these "critics of Marx," in whom the so-called "legal Marxists" had appeared. In exile, considering them the chief "instigators" of all ideological confusion and the most malicious opponents of revolutionary social democracy, we had intended to take them on immediately, so to speak, "with the bayonet."

Not without surprise did I learn from my comrades that, like the "worker-activists," our "legal Marxists" had received them most cordially, clearly showing that they were ready to see in our group the natural leader of the social democratic party, and that they were inclined to support our initiatives directed at organizing a broad struggle against autocracy. My friends encountered such sentiments not only from the eclectic V. Ya. Bogucharsky, but also from such doctrinaires of the "critique of Marx" as P. B. Struve and M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky. Having arrived in Petersburg with the firm intention of placing the social democratic organ in the closest connection not only with the mass workers' movement but also with that broad opposition-democratic movement which was developing ever more tumultuously in recent years, my comrades became convinced that the most authoritative center of this latter movement was precisely the group of "legal Marxists." Meanwhile, we considered the influence of the latter's activity on social-democratic practitioners deeply harmful not only because it was directed against the revolutionary foundations of Marxist doctrine in general, but also particularly because revisionist "critique of Marx" was perceived by its Russian adherents as a justification for the separation of the workers' movement from the revolutionary traditions of socialism and its limitation to Russian frameworks of an almost trade-unionist "economism." Insofar as we considered an irreconcilable struggle with the revisionist group our pressing task, what relationship should we now establish with them when they declare their readiness to go with us and even behind us in the name of the nation-wide revolutionary struggle against tsarism that we are raising?

Despite the fact that both were convinced that Struve and Co. had embarked on a path which rapidly takes them from the socialist camp into the camp of bourgeois liberalism, both Ulyanov and Potresov came away with the impression that for the immediate future this group would willingly content itself with the role of "second fiddle" if it saw that we, with our "orthodox" banner, had succeeded in organizing a strong revolutionary party of action. Subsequently, as it seems to me, the forecasts of A. N. Potresov and V. I. Ulyanov diverged. Potresov hoped that the existence of such a party could for a long time secure for social democracy ideological hegemony over all democratic elements of the intelligentsia and tear them away from constitutionalist-zemstvo bourgeois liberalism. On the contrary, Ulyanov, like me, rather expected that, in the end, that part of the intelligentsia which had found in revisionism a reason and means to subject the fundamental values of the socialist worldview to the corrosive action of theoretical skepticism, would find peace precisely in the bosom of this zemstvo constitutionalism after the successes of the workers' movement prepared the ground for its triumph. Both stood for an agreement with the Struve group, but Ulyanov conceived this agreement "with a stone in the breast," and, as subsequently became clear, did not at all consider it necessary that this stone not stick out too noticeably; whereas Potresov reckoned with the fact that the agreement morally obligated both sides, and believed that it would lay upon ours the obligation of flexible tactics, capable of consolidating the initial success.

Having familiarized myself with the opinion of my friends, I expressed my doubt regarding the very possibility of an agreement with the "critics" if we did not intend to renounce open and irreconcilable struggle for "orthodoxy." To this I was told that both Struve and Tugan in intimate conversations continue to emphasize their closeness to the social democratic party *) and conduct themselves as party comrades. At the same time I was told—which I until then did not know—that the "orthodox" manifesto of the R.S.-D.R.P., issued in 1898, after its First Congress, containing the famous proposition that the further east one goes, the less capable the bourgeoisie is of fulfilling revolutionary historical tasks—that this manifesto was written by that very P. B. Struve who so soon after this waged war against any "orthodoxy."

In any case, we all agreed that conversations with Struve and his colleagues, who were soon to come to Pskov, should be conducted on the basis of a clearly formulated credo of ours, in which our position should be unambiguously underlined not only on the question of revolutionary struggle against tsarism, but also on the question of theoretical struggle against revisionism and reformism. I predicted that in this case the agreement would be broken off at the very beginning. "We shall see," my comrades answered me.

Ulyanov undertook to compile a prospectus of the new newspaper, with which we were then to acquaint our "friend-enemies" in order to put squarely before them the question of whether they intended to support us.

Among other things, it became clear to me that the question of financial resources upon which we could dispose for beginning broad publishing and organizational work depended to a certain degree on the support, or at least the friendly neutrality of the Struve group. We could not count on the help of the local committees, even leaving aside the question of whether we would come to agreement with the majority of them. The meager treasuries of the local party organizations were completely unsuited to supporting the enterprises we had in mind: a regularly published and technically accomplished print organ, transportation, a "passport factory," and the organization of the "illegal." For the start our financial prospects were not bad. Besides the personal resources of A. N. Potresov, with which he could dispose, there were promises from A. M. Kalmykova, *) *) Let me recall that in 1896 at the international socialist congress in London Struve entered the Russian social democratic delegation and was the author of the report presented by the latter to the congress on the agrarian question in Russia.

who completely sympathized with our initiative. Moreover, Ulyanov had an acquaintance on the Volga, a factory owner, who promised to supply him with a thousand or two rubles. But beyond that we were already counting (by the personal connections of A. N. Potresov and A. M. Kalmykova) on people who, belonging to the circle of what Potresov later called "Marxist-shaped democracy," could close their purses to us if Struve and Co. declared war on us. One such person—the translator of Kant, Zhukovsky—if I remember correctly, had also by that time already promised 1000 rubles for our newspaper.

A day or two later our old comrade, the late Stepan Ivanovich Radchenko, arrived in Pskov and reported that with the next train P. B. Struve and M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky would arrive for negotiations. For some reason V. Ya. Bogucharsky could not come. The expected engineer and industrial figure Tillo, a social democrat since the 1880s, also did not arrive, who at that time, together with S. I. Radchenko, embodied in Petersburg the "orthodox" tradition and helped him in his struggle with the onslaught of "economistically" inclined youth in the "Union of Struggle."

The meeting took place at the apartment of Lyubov Nikolaevna Radchenko, who was serving a two-year official supervision in Pskov for her long activity in the Petersburg Union of Struggle. Previously we read and approved the prospectus of the new newspaper written by Vladimir Ilyich.

During the reading I observed the faces of our guests. I was curious to see how they would react to those expressions in which the "announcement" spoke of the harm done to the revolutionary movement by the "critique of Marxism." On the face of M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky there was visible either regret or bewilderment, at moments he was obviously restraining himself from interrupting the reading. On the contrary, Struve conducted himself with Olympian calm, through which, however, one could occasionally catch a barely perceptible mocking gleam in his eyes. At the conclusion of the reading his face expressed rather satisfaction, or even polite approval of what had been heard.

"What then do you think, gentlemen, about all this?" asked Ulyanov.

Struve said something general and indefinite to the effect that, remaining, of course, in his opinion regarding certain questions, he, on the whole and in general, had nothing against the document. He spoke as though reluctantly, squeezing words out of himself. It was clear that he was not expressing all of his thoughts.

The simple-hearted Mikhail Ivanovich, apparently, found diplomacy not to his taste. He spoke heatedly about the fact that in the entire portion of the declaration which discusses the condition of social democracy and Marxism, he sees an edge directed personally against him and Struve, and moreover extremely unjustly, striking in the face of the facts. It was precisely he and Struve who in every way supported the *political* direction in social democracy, acting in the corresponding spirit on the practitioners with whom they came into contact, and providing articles on political themes for illegal publications. Meanwhile, our declaration makes the "critique of Marxism" responsible for "economism" and the refusal of political struggle. The very characterization of the critique of Marxism is given in such a way that he, Tugan, must ask himself: can he and Struve support our undertaking if this passage remains in the declaration? The silent Struve expressed by his facial expression approval of Tugan in his outburst. Well, thought I, how will Vladimir Ilyich extricate himself from this ticklish situation?

He immediately took the floor and tried to counter Tugan's objection with factual material. The "dossier" he had collected turned out to be rather rich, although consisting of comparatively minor facts. The whole thing concerned various attempts by older Petersburg social democrats (Tillo, Radchenko and others) to organize some sort of literary action against "economism" and thus support Plekhanov. From the data presented by Ulyanov it followed that each time the "legal Marxists" refused to assist in such an undertaking, citing the ground that they considered any attacks on those conducting work among the proletariat to be inexpedient and harmful. Moreover, it is possible that this argument we first heard from our opponents here at the meeting as an explanation of their refusals. In any case, they insisted precisely on this explanation, on their unwillingness to nourish intra-party struggle. Ulyanov, and then Potresov, objected that, on the contrary, *they* were nourishing it, ideologically supporting the revolt against "orthodoxy" and thereby seducing the weak from the social-democratic youth to break with the group "Emancipation of Labor." Struve objected that he considered the removal of the group "Emancipation of Labor" from the leading role in the party an evil and spoke with the practitioners in this spirit. On the whole, the conversation was conducted in very peaceful tones and, when Ulyanov expressed readiness to somewhat soften the passage speaking of the role played by the "critics of Marxism," to my surprise, the matter clearly began to move toward agreement. The dispute, which had already taken on a theoretical character, somehow of itself subsided, and when we asked: what, after all, is your final attitude toward our undertaking, I heard with surprise Struve's firm declaration: we consider it necessary and will support it to the best of our ability, after which he asked us to accept a monthly contribution from him of, if I recall correctly, 5 rubles. Tugan-Baranovsky, who apparently was still not averse to arguing and "haggling," said with a somewhat grim face that he too was making a contribution, likewise as a monthly donation, of 10 rubles. If we had foreseen how our paths would diverge, we would probably have preserved, as a historical monument, the ruble note handed over by the future vilest enemy of socialism and revolution—for the founding of an organ devoted to fierce defense of socialism and revolution.

Upon the departure of our guests we settled our affairs for the immediate future. It was decided that A. N. Potresov would soon go abroad, enter into direct contact with Plekhanov and Axelrod, and already now concern himself with the publication of a theoretical journal, which in any case would be published abroad. Regarding the political newspaper, we, for the time being, had to reckon with the desire of the practitioners to try its publication in Russia. We ourselves were entirely skeptical regarding the possibility of ensuring the publication of an organ in Russia and hoped that, if the congress entrusted us with its editorship, we would persuade our comrades to move it to Germany. Potresov was therefore to clarify with the German social democrats the possibility of conspiratorial establishment of the newspaper in Germany: we did not want to publish the newspaper in emigrant centers, partly so as not to fall into too close contact with the emigrant milieu, and partly to be closer to the Russian border. Ulyanov was to remain in Pskov until the Party Congress and represent our group at it either alone or together with me, and after the congress, if its results were favorable to our plans, move abroad as well; as for me, I was to head for Poltava, from there to establish connections with the southern organizations and specifically to draw closer to the group of *Yuzhny Rabochiy* (Southern Worker). I considered my move abroad, should our undertaking finally settle there, necessary to postpone, in any case for several months, recognizing it necessary that at least one of us personally become acquainted with the state of the movement on the ground and with the new generation of workers, and also personally gather material for the first, most difficult issues of the new organ. My comrades essentially agreed, but feared that within several months I would manage to "fall" before I could make it to the border. The question for now remained open.